"I'd consider not running any combo-hate at all"???
Bullshit!
Good players can deal with every hate you can imagine. Since the manyANT players love this deck for its auto-pilot-playing-style, combo-hate is perfectly alright
Printable View
"I'd consider not running any combo-hate at all"???
Bullshit!
Good players can deal with every hate you can imagine. Since the manyANT players love this deck for its auto-pilot-playing-style, combo-hate is perfectly alright
Auto-Pilot? Yeah, right.Quote:
Originally Posted by GoboLord
bIf you play against ANT, and a good player is playing...
Forget it, they win alot. They lose only if they go bad or unlucky I think so...
But, I've seen some players who play volcanic islands in mono red (with black it's harder but yeah) and they go for extract.
Idk how you guys think about that but I really like the idea because in the Netherlands they play mostly only one tendrils...
You are absolutely right.Quote:
Originally Posted by BantFTW
I basically agree with this and I don't really see what GoboLord is getting at.Quote:
Originally Posted by BantFTW
The thing about combo hate, and silver bullet sideboard cards in general in goblins, is that you CANNOT rely on them. A deck like countertop is going to get way more out of its sideboard than we are, obviously, with all their draw mechanics and shuffling and what not. 4 chalices in our sideboard aren't going to be as good as 4 spell pierces in countertop's sideboard (just an example).
So even for just 4 extract, you have to draw one of them early and have a fetch for the one volcanic. Personally I feel like if you have to go that far you should probably play something else.
If combo becomes popular in your meta, I recommend investing in merfolk and playing that once in awhile. Combo will push out the zoo and board control decks, and then you will have mostly good matchups.
I'd rather save the sideboard space for other bad but winnable matchups like zoo. I know Mantis on these forums used to test against combo and used REB in combination with other hate. I'd try that before further manabase dilution. Personally I don't have the time to test against a matchup like this, I'm more concerned with more popular decks.
As far as I'm concerned, combo and GY matchups need atleast 6 pieces to effectively deal with it. And for combo a combination of mindbreak traps and chalice of the void (aka, cards that don't make you lose tempo) seem to work the best.
If you're only going to devote 3/4 spots to it you better spend your sideboard for other MU's.
A couple questions...
If I have Aether Vial and Lackey in my opening hand, which do I play T1? If I have those with say, Lightning Bolt, Siege-bang, 2 mountains and a Wasteland, I see playing the Lackey T1 and trying to bolt him through with the Vial dropping T2. I guess what I'm asking is, is it completely relevent to the MU?
Also, I'm having trouble deciding on my sideboard. I have to test the meta to see how many Anarchy/Perish/REB are needed but as far as combo hate (if there's a presence in the meta) should I run Pithing Needle, Chalice, or Mindbreak Trap?
I see the weakness in Pithing Needle, but I also see drawback from the Chalice blocking out my spells too.
Posted this over in the ANT thread, figured I should post it here as well:
@gobolord: The absolute best hate you can have is Null Rod. Well, when running the terrible version with no IGG and 2 Tendrils, Chalice @0 really hurts them. But for EVERYTHING, play Null Rod. With DD, Chalice is whatever, you can play around it. There is no playing around Null Rod ... ever (unless Goblins gives us about 4-7 turns to setup threshed Cabal Rituals + IT assuming we can't find answers for it).
Thorn is also good, but if I had the choice of having Thorn/Sphere in play or Null Rod, I would MUCH rather see the Thorn/Sphere since it allows me to use Top to find an answer and doesn't shut off my artifact mana if I stall on 2 lands or something early on. Although, I will tell you one thing, out of all the hate cards I want to see played, I HOPE to see Mindbreak Trap the most. The card is so worthless against combo its ridiculous. It may steal A game ... but it sucks against anyone who knows what they are doing and usually you mull to 5-6 trying to find it and keep shitty hands.
In short, Null Rod is THE BEST way to stall combo out for the longest period of time because it MUST be answered if your deck can only win VIA storm.
Although when it comes to running combo hate in Goblins ... its largely worthless. Now I have a different train of thought, a lot of people say "well I want a fighting chance" but if that fighting chance is still like a 35% chance of winning, those 4 slots that you dedicate to the matchup are largely worthless. With a SB I always try to optimize my 45-55% matchups and slightly help my good-decent matchups. But the ones that are so abysmal I take em as an auto-loss because I am not going to clog up the board with shitty cards, only used in 1 matchup that don't even help me that much. Its a waste of time and effort. Make your 45% matchups better, not the ones where you will win maybe 15% of the time.
That's doable. 6+6 equals 12 which leaves 3 for Perish :) That's all the relevant hard matchups covered.Quote:
Originally Posted by Nessaja
@ All: First of all: What I said about auto-pilot-playing-style of ANT was wrong, my apologies. I wrote that when I was in a bad temper.Quote:
Originally Posted by Pulp_Fiction
@ Pulp Fiction: What you say about Null Rod makes sense. I partly agree with what you say about how to build up a sideboard. Indeed we should run SB cards optimize our 45-55% match-ups. But we should also run cards that are flexible enough for not only killing one deck. So IMO Null Rod is one of those cards. It improves match-ups against ANT and Belcher, but so what? I'd rather run Thorn/Chalice/Pillar because they are good against other decks too.
Maybe Null Rod is a good choice, but for the moment Im not convinced. Any other ideas where to use Rod?
In my SB,the 2 P.Needle could be replaced by Null Rods. I mainly put them in ti fight Sensei's Divining Top and Jitte/friends.Quote:
Originally Posted by GoboLord
The bad part is that it fucks Vial up, so I would not play it (again).
No no no. CHALICE IS NULL ROD THAT COSTS ZERO. The only benefit of null rod in the combo matchup is that it shuts off top, which is a 2 of in mosts lists. Chalices benefits are that it drops turn 1, it causes zero tempo loss, it doesn't shut off vial, it doesn't allow their artifacts to stay in play, and a 2nd one can be dropped turn 2 to reallyy screw them over. Chalice is just as if not more useful than null rod in other matchups. Once you have vial in play, you can set chalice to whatever. People need to actually spend two seconds thinking about what makes a card good. Those who think null rod is the be all end all, please explain to me where my logic is failing, because right now I don't see any reason to play that card..Quote:
Originally Posted by GoboLord
Based on the decks I play, I think Null Rod is better. If you play the 2x AdN 2x Tendrils lists, absolutely Chalice is better since they have such a reliance on free mana. But to the adaptable combo decks that run Doomsday or TES variants, Chalice is nothing. Chalice + Trinisphere is a problem, but Chalice by itself is fairly worthless. CotV@1 .... ok, watch me IGG loop. Chalice @0 ... ok, watch me IGG loop or look at this cool DD stack with Dark Rituals, Meditate, and Tendrils. Chalice @2 or less ... check out Emrakul. This is all shit I can do to win through it, let alone finding any of the 8+ answers I have postboard. Chalice may slightly inconvenience or delay me, Null Rod STOPS me. Only thing I can do through Null Rod is build an Emrakul stack with Needle so I can stop Wasteland.
Maybe its the lists you play, maybe its something else, as a combo player I would much rather see Chalice played against me than Null Rod. Null Rod is also amazing at shutting down Top, Vedalken Shackles, Engineered Explosives, Thopter Foundry combo, and Affinity basically auto-loses to it. I mean, play what you want as combo hate, but just don't run Mindbreak Trap, it is the worst thing you can put in. You will lose most games against competent players. Null Rod turns everything off and MUST be answered. Chalice requires no answer to win. Thorn is annoying but ... as long as I can keep playing my setup spells I have no problem with it usually unless it is backed up by double Piledriver + more goblins.
You're right, it's all about context.Quote:
Originally Posted by pater
T1 blindly aether vial is better. But that never happens, because you will always have accompanying cards. If you can curve out with vial and aren't afraid of daze, go for it. If you have t1 lackey t2 removal (not just gempalm) and a really juicy lackey target (basically just SGC and ringleader), go for that.
If you know what you're playing, it changes a lot of things of course. For instance, vs zoo I would almost always go t1 vial over lackey, especially with a wasteland in hand. With the given hand, I would put vial down first vs zoo.
Generally, vial is the better turn 1 play. But generally doesn't really matter. SGC/Ringleader + Lackey + Removal (+ Vial) is usually enough to sway me for the t1 lackey in most matchups.
From what I've seen, chalice is best at 0 followed by a goldfish. Chalice at 1, even if you lay it, won't really matter, because the game won't go on long enough for it to be relevant (and you played a 1cc spell first turn hopefully, if not, well at least you have combo hate on the board right?).
But all those options aren't going to be enough vs all but beginning combo players in my opinion, like Pulp said. I haven't tested null rod so I have no comment on that.
If we're going to prepare for Ad Naus, we should definitely prepare for a deck something like this:Quote:
Originally Posted by Pulp_Fiction
http://sales.starcitygames.com//deck...p?DeckID=32454
because that's what we're more likely to run into. Chalice for 0 makes an IGG loop difficult unless you have extra mana floating, and IGG usually just gets sided in as a 1-of anyway. You need 6 mana to tutor into and cast tendrils, so you need B in the pool and dark + cabal at the least. But you're not incorrect when you call chalice an inconvenience. It's possible, although difficult, to win with chalice for 0 on the table, and you can often find a chain to bounce it EOT and combo out. If they drop chalice for 0 and 1, then it becomes a problem. If you didn't board in recall, you're probably done. But it's not meant to shut you down. It's meant to get us to T4 or so so we can win before you. But it's when you claim that null rod shuts you down that you're completely losing me. It does absolutely NOTHING different than a chalice for 0, unless you value top WAY more than I do. And I don't know about you, but I can combo out on T2 with ad naus. As a goblin player, I'd much rather use a 0 drop than a 2 drop for that reason. You respond to Null Rod the same way as chalice: float mana into rituals, or bounce it EOT.
But as far as chalice goes, I've seen enough Ad Naus decks win through it to think thoughtseize/duress is a better way to go. They won't always have a brainstorm to respond with, and that won't even matter when you're on the play. Even if they storm pieces on top of their deck, just removing one ritual is often good enough to stop them long enough for the win.
Although I do agree Null Rod is the most annoying solution when playing against any Doomsday version of Ant I think you must all ask yourself the question what you will be most likely to face if you're going to any tournament.
8 times in 10 when you play against AnT it will be regular Ant because it's 1) easier to play 2) more explosive (slightly).
Against regular Ant I would have to say I find Thorn of Amethyst the most effective sollution. (although I've had had situations where it was to slow) When a Thorn of Amethyst hits play it basically means the combo player will not combo out before he gets rid of it.
But just as important you make the combo player way more vulnerable to both port and waste effects buying you way more time.
Null rod is annoying when you play regular Ant but I punishes you in no way if you have 2x ritual or Crit + AN. You play Ad nauseum without any trouble, find your bounce spell (if you dont have enough rituals) and win.
The reason why in doomsday versions Null Rod is more annoying is because in doomsday versions top is the easiest way to anable cheap doomsday piles to play through hate cards. (like chalice)
So, I've been lurking this thread for last month or so, and have used it to tweak this deck that I've played and loved since Onslaught block. There's a GPT in Nashville next week that I'm interested in playing, and while I'm familiar enough with the deck, I have no Legacy experience other than what I've read about various decklists and whatnot.
That being said, I'd like some help finalizing my list. I have no idea how many people will show up, or even what the meta will look like, so I'm going for the best overall, non-specialized percentages I can. Here's my current list:
38 spells:
4 Aether Vial
3 Gempalm Incinerator
1 Goblin Chieftain (flex spot)
4 Goblin Lackey
4 Goblin Matron
4 Goblin Piledriver
4 Goblin Ringleader
4 Goblin Warchief
2 Mogg War Marshal
2 Siege-gang Commander
2 Stingscourger
3 Warren Weirding
1 Wort, Boggart Auntie
22 land:
3 Auntie's Hovel
4 Badlands
4 Bloodstained Mire
4 Wasteland
1 Wooded Foothills
5 Mountain
1 Swamp
sideboard:
4 Chalice of the Void
4 Leyline of the Void
7 Anarchy/Perish/Pyrokinesis
My biggest concerns are the single Chieftain in the MD (I'd rather have a good option as opposed to just the least bad one), and only 7 spots in the SB to devote to 3 very good cards (and maybe a single Sharpshooter, Scrapper, etc.). Any advice?
Also, any general sideboarding tips would be greatly appreciated. And, thanks already to the board for helping me get this far.
I'd cut the mogg war marshalls for 2 more chieftain and cut 1 stingscourger and the wort for 2 instigators (you could do 3 instigators and 2 chieftains as well).Quote:
Originally Posted by spector_xero
As for as sb, the 7 flex cards really depends on the meta. If it looks more aggro, play the full set of Pyrokensis, if its stax/enchantress/landstill, more anarchys, zoo/bant/thresh, play Perishes. Do your best get there early and try and do some scouting.
To understand what hate pieces are best we must first determine what we are trying to achieve with them. ANT sweeps the floor with pure aggro, but has a much harder time against pressure paired with disruption; the aggro control approach. Preboard Goblins is a pure aggro deck, but my goal is to set up an aggro control deck. This means maximizing the amount of tempo generated and dealing 20 damage in the shortest period of time.
Combo players tell me time and time again that Thorn of Amethyst is what they fear most, moreso than Chalice, or Mindbreak Trap. But they forget about the Goblins players perspective and the afforementioned concept of tempo, you spend your complete second turn casting Thorn this means that you are not applying pressure. Chalice and Mindbreak Trap do not require any investment and allow for quick kill while still applying pressure. With Warren Instigator we actually have something relevant to do on turn 2, namely setting up a turn 3 win, with Thorn this would otherwise be a turn 4 kill.
Another consideration si that Chalice is stopped by bounce and Trap is stopped by Duress, meanwhile Thorn is stopped by both. Trap also provides the element of surprise. And while good combo players might see this coming but I absolutely agree with GoboLord, that not every ANT player is a great player and a lot of them will not play around Trap only to get demolished by it. The best configuration I could find while dedicating 4 slots to combo is 4 Mindbreak Trap with 1 Earwig Squad in the main.
I agree with what your saying, but if they go turn 1 duress, turn 2 go off (like the deck is built to do), your sooo SOL. I'd prefer chalice just because it gives me SOMETHING thats permanent, and they have to waste time and valuable spells finding bounce. When boarding against combo, I like to take 8-10 cards from my sideboard, shuffle them into my deck, and then remove everything but the chalices. This leaves my opponent thinking that I'm playing a shit load of hate, and often times the "good" players will duress me with a chalice in play just to make sure I'm not also holding mindbreak trap.Quote:
Originally Posted by Mantis